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Nvidia’s CEO Declares Moore’s Law Dead

Thu, 09/28/2017 - 14:55 — Anonymous

Is Moore’s Law Dead?

Even the answer to this question is open to debate. Historically, people treat Moore’s Law as a rule that says CPU performance will double every 18-24 months, but that’s not true. Moore’s Law predicts transistor counts doubling, not raw performance. There was another rule that governed performance improvements: Dennard scaling. Dennard scaling stated as transistors became smaller, they would use less power. This would reduce the heat generated by any given transistor and allow them to be packed closer together. Unfortunately, Dennard scaling broke around 2005, which is why CPU clock speeds have barely budged since then.

I’ve argued in the past Moore’s Law isn’t dead so much as its transformed. Rather than focusing strictly on increasing transistor counts and clock speeds, companies now focus on power efficiency and component integration. The explosion of specialized processors for handling AI and deep learning workloads is partly a reaction to the fact that CPUs don’t scale the way they used to.